Download or read book Legitimizing Human Rights NGOs written by Obiora Chinedu Okafor and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A claim and empirical demonstration that if human rights NGOs in Nigeria are to popularly legitimise themselves then almost all of them must undergo a fundamental revision of form, concept and activist methods. Legitimising NGOs in Africa will grant a greater achievement of influence to those organisations: this volume argues that only a transition to a mass movement model will ensure the legitimisation of most Nigerian and African human rights NGO communities. Okafor builds a list of recommendations designed to be used as a blueprint for successfully popularising NGOs.

Download or read book Making Human Rights a Reality written by Emilie Hafner-Burton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-24 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-265) and index.

Download or read book Human Rights Obligations of Non State Actors written by Andrew Clapham and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-03-02 with total page 2518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The threats to human rights posed by non-state actors are of increasing concern. Human rights activists increasingly address the activity of multinational corporations, the policies of international organizations such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and international crimes committed by entities such as armed opposition groups and terrorists. This book presents an approach to human rights that goes beyond the traditional focus on states and outlines the human rights obligations of non-state actors. Furthermore, it addresses some of the ways in which these entities can be held legally accountable for their actions in various jurisdictions. The political debate concerning the appropriateness of expanding human rights scrutiny to non-state actors is discussed and dissected. For some, extending human rights into these spheres trivializes human rights and allows abusive governments to distract us from ongoing violations. For others such an extension is essential if human rights are properly to address the current concerns of women and workers. The main focus of the book, however, is on the legal obligations of non-state actors. The book discusses how developments in the fields of international responsibility and international criminal law have implications for building a framework for the human rights obligations of non-state actors in international law. In turn these international developments have drawn on the changing ways in which human rights are implemented in national law. A selection of national jurisdictions, including the United States, South Africa and the United Kingdom are examined with regard to the application of human rights law to non-state actors. The book's final part includes suggestions with regard to understanding the parameters of the human rights obligations of non-state actors. Key to understanding the legal obligations of non-state actors are concepts such as dignity and democracy. While neither concept can unravel the dilemmas involved in the application of human rights law to non-state actors, a better understanding of the tensions surrounding these concepts can help us to understand what is at stake.

Download or read book Legal Discrepancies Internal Displacement of Women and Children in Africa written by Veronica Patience Fynn and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veronica Fynn's "Legal Discrepancies: Internal Displacement of Women and Children in Africa" is not only timely (produced soon after Africa adopts its historical Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced People in Africa, 2009). "Legal Discrepancies: Legal Discrepancies: Internal Displacement of Women and Children in Africa" offers the first comprehensive, holistic, and multi-disciplinary examination on the efficacy of international, regional and national laws and policies in protecting and assisting IDPs. Fynn's research provides a thought provoking framework for academics, lawyers, public health practitioners, aid workers, national governments, regional institutions and international organizations to rethink the legal space within which internally displaced peoples lingers.

Download or read book The African Human Rights System Activist Forces and International Institutions written by Obiora Chinedu Okafor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-17 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2007 book draws from and builds upon many of the more traditional approaches to the study of international human rights institutions (IHIs), especially quasi-constructivism. The author reveals some of the ways in which many such domestic deployments of the African system have been brokered or facilitated by local activist forces, such as human rights NGOs, labour unions, women's groups, independent journalists, dissident politicians, and activist judges. In the end, the book exposes and reflects upon the inherent inability of the dominant compliance-focused model to adequately capture the range of other ways - apart from via state compliance - in which the domestic invocation of IHIs like the African system can contribute - albeit to a modest extent - to the pro-human rights alterations that can sometimes occur in the self-understandings, conceptions of interest or senses of appropriateness held within key domestic institutions within states.

Download or read book International Human Rights Law in Africa written by Frans Viljoen and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a comprehensive and analytical overview of human rights in Africa, this book deals particularly with the African regional system of human rights protection. Among the issues it explores are poverty, HIV AIDS, and the tension between international standards and national implementation.

Download or read book Regional Human Rights Systems written by Christina M. Cerna and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past sixty years the regional human rights systems have surpassed the UN human rights bodies in affording protection to the victims of human rights violations. Most of these systems have courts that are empowered to issue legally binding judgments and reparations for violations of human rights, which states have been unwilling to accord the UN system. The essays selected for this volume examine the structure and functioning of the principal regional human rights systems in the world today: 1) the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, 2) the European Court of Human Rights, 3) the African Commission and Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights and 4) the ASEAN Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission. These systems guarantee primarily civil and political rights. Central to all four systems is the necessity of a democratic form of government to guarantee these rights, although not all governments, parties to these regional treaties, are democracies. These articles trace the history of these systems, in particular, the expansion of their membership to include almost all independent countries in the region, and their evolution towards recognition of a 'right to democracy'.

Download or read book The Transformation of Human Rights Fact finding written by Philip Alston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy, and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged government abuses. In recent years, human rights fact-finding has greatly proliferated and become more sophisticated and complex, while also being subjected to stronger scrutiny from governments. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of fact-finding, it remains strikingly under-studied and under-theorized. Too little has been done to bring forth the assumptions, methodologies, and techniques of this rapidly developing field, or to open human rights fact-finding to critical and constructive scrutiny. The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of fact-finding with rigorous and critical analysis of the field of practice, while providing a range of accounts of what actually happens. It deepens the study and practice of human rights investigations, and fosters fact-finding as a discretely studied topic, while mapping crucial transformations in the field. The contributions to this book are the result of a major international conference organized by New York University Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Engaging the expertise and experience of the editors and contributing authors, it offers a broad approach encompassing contemporary issues and analysis across the human rights spectrum in law, international relations, and critical theory. This book addresses the major areas of human rights fact-finding such as victim and witness issues; fact-finding for advocacy, enforcement, and litigation; the role of interdisciplinary expertise and methodologies; crowd sourcing, social media, and big data; and international guidelines for fact-finding.

Download or read book Help or Harm written by Amanda Murdie and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When do international non-governmental organizations like Oxfam or Human Rights Watch actually work? Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs answers this question by offering the first comprehensive framework for understanding the effects of the international non-governmental organizations working in the area of human security. Unlike much of the previous literature on INGOs within international relations, its theoretical focus includes both advocacy INGOs—such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace, whose predominant mission is getting a targeted actor to adopt a policy or behavior in line with the position of the INGO—and service INGOs—such as CARE or Oxfam, which focus mainly on goods provision. The book rigorously and logically assesses how INGOs with heterogeneous underlying motivations interact with those other actors that are critical for advocacy and service provision. This theoretical framework is tested quantitatively on a sample of over 100 countries that have exhibited imperfect human security situations since the end of the Cold War. These case-study vignettes serve as "reality checks" to the game-theoretic logic and empirical findings of the book. Amanda Murdie finds that INGOs can have powerful effects on human rights and development outcomes—although the effect of these organizations is not monolithic: differences in organizational characteristics (which reflect underlying motivations, issue-focus, and state peculiarities) condition when and where this vibrant and growing force of INGOs will be effective contributors to human security outcomes.

Download or read book Taking Root written by James Ron and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human rights organizations have grown exponentially across the globe, particularly in the global South, and the term human rights is now common parlance among politicians and civil society activists. While debates about human rights are waged in elite circles, what do publics in the global South think about human rights ideas and the organizations that promote them? Drawing on large-scale public opinion surveys and interviews with human rights practitioners in India, Mexico, Morocco, and Nigeria, Taking Root finds that most people are in fact broadly supportive of human rights discourse, trust local human rights groups, and do not view human rights as a tool of foreign powers. However, this general public support isn't grounded in strong commitments of public engagement, money, or local ties to the human rights sector. Publics in the global South do donate to charitable causes and organizations but rarely give to local rights groups, and these organizations must instead seek aid from foreign sources. As the most informative and comprehensive account of public perceptions of human rights available across several regions of the world, Taking Root challenges a number of accepted truths held by human rights supporters and skeptics alike.

Download or read book International Law and the Third World written by Richard Falk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-03-31 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is devoted to critically exploring the past, present and future relevance of international law to the priorities of the countries, peoples and regions of the South. Within the limits of space it has tried to be comprehensive in scope and representative in perspective and participation. The contributions are grouped into three clusters to give some sense of coherence to the overall theme: articles by Baxi, Anghie, Falk, Stevens and Rajagopal on general issues bearing on the interplay between international law and world order; articles highlighting regional experience by An-Na’im, Okafor, Obregon and Shalakany; and articles on substantive perspectives by Mgbeoji, Nesiah, Said, Elver, King-Irani, Chinkin, Charlesworth and Gathii. This collective effort gives an illuminating account of the unifying themes, while at the same time exhibiting the wide diversity of concerns and approaches.

Download or read book Protecting Human Security in Africa written by Ademola Abass and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protecting Human Security in Africa discusses some of the most potent threats to human security in Africa. It deals especially with those threats to the security of African people which are least understood or explored. In themes varying from corruption, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, food security, the devastation of internal displacement in Africa, the link between natural resources and human security, to the problems of forced labour, threats to women's security, and environmental security, the book examines the legal and policy challenges of protecting human security in Africa. This work also analyses the role of NGOs and the civil society in advocating human security issues in Africa. It considers the role of regional human rights mechanisms and judicial bodies, such as the African Commission for Human Rights and the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights, in seeking to guarantee human security in Africa. Finally, with particular reference to the Somalia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Darfur crises, the book studies the role of African regional organizations, especially the African Union, in protecting the human security of Africans. Written by leading experts on its various themes, this is an indispensable book for all those seeking to learn more about the real challenges facing Africans and African organizations.

Download or read book Human Rights State Compliance and Social Change written by Ryan Goodman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – human rights commissions and ombudsmen – have gained recognition as a possible missing link in the transmission and implementation of international human rights norms at the domestic level. They are also increasingly accepted as important participants in global and regional forums where international norms are produced. By collecting innovative work from experts spanning international law, political science, sociology and human rights practice, this book critically examines the significance of this relatively new class of organizations. It focuses, in particular, on the prospects of these institutions to effectuate state compliance and social change. Consideration is given to the role of NHRIs in delegitimizing – though sometimes legitimizing – governments' poor human rights records and in mobilizing – though sometimes demobilizing – civil society actors. The volume underscores the broader implications of such cross-cutting research for scholarship and practice in the fields of human rights and global affairs in general.

Download or read book Problems and Perspectives of the Relationship between the Media and Human Rights written by Paromita Das and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a democratic political system, the media is often entrusted with the responsibility of guarding the rights of the people. As such, it is essential to critically look at its role and functions in our present socio-political context. This book represents a comprehensive analysis of the following core issues: the role of the media in educating, protecting and promoting human rights; the challenges facing the media and human rights; human rights reporting and coverage; and the media’s role during violations of human rights, especially with regards to women. The book also contains suggestions and measures to increase awareness on human rights. Furthermore, it discusses the existing discourse of human rights and the media in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Download or read book The Role of Civil Society in Africa s Quest for Democratization written by Abadir M. Ibrahim and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tests many of the assumptions, hypotheses, and conclusions connected with the presumed role of civil society organizations in the democratization of African countries. Taking a comparative approach, it looks at countries that have successfully democratized, those that are stuck between progress and regression, those that have regressed into dictatorship, and those that are currently in transitional flux and evaluates what role, if any, civil society has played in each instance. The countries discussed—South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Tunisia—represent a diverse set of social and political circumstances and different levels of democratic achievement, providing a rich set of case studies. Each sample state also offers an internal comparison, as each has historically experienced different stages of democratization. Along the course of each case study, the book also considers the effect that other traditionally studied factors, such as culture, colonization, economic development and foreign aid, may have had on individual attempts at democratization. The first extensive work on civil society and democratization in Africa, the book adds new insights to the applicability of democratization theory in a non-Western context, both filling a gap in and adding to the existing universal scholarship. This book will be useful for scholars of political science, economics, sociology and African studies, as well as human rights activists and policy makers in the relevant geographical areas.

Download or read book Judges and Democratization written by B. C. Smith and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-18 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition examines judicial independence as an aspect of democratization based on the premise that democracy cannot be consolidated without the rule of law of which judicial independence is an indispensable part. It pays particular attention to the restraints placed upon judicial independence and examines the reforms which are being applied, or remain to be adopted, in order to guard against the different kinds of interference which prevent judicial decisions being taken in a wholly impartial way. Focusing on the growing authoritarianism in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, the book analyses the paradox of judicial activism arising from the independence endowed upon the judiciary and the rights bestowed on citizens by post-authoritarian constitutions. Finally, it asks how judicial accountability can be made compatible with the preservation of judicial independence when the concept of an accountable, independent judiciary appears to be a contradiction in terms. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of judicial studies, democratization and autocratization studies, constitutionalism, global governance, and more broadly comparative government/politics, human rights and comparative public law.

Download or read book Documenting the Undocumented written by Veronica P. Fynn and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proceedings of the annual conference held Apr. 16-17, 2009 at York University.